Rod Cook Declares USANA Exonerated?????

USANA EXONERATED ? YES! ABSOLUTELY!

DEEP CAPTURE STORY – THE TRUTH COMES OUT

1 April 2011 – Editors Note: Here is the story of the screw job behind the USANA short sell run orchestrated by the Fraud Discovery Institute operatives Barry Minkow, Jon Taylor, Robert L. Fitzpatrick, and Tracy Cohen. Patrick Byrne below owns Overstock.com and hates short sellers because they caused him great grief. I have shortened this interview to save you time. My apologies to Bezinga.com if I massacred their content. Bezinga.com blogg the full link is below and the full interview.

Now, on Deep Capture, you've been following this Barry Minkow case pretty closely. He was charged in securities fraud against Lennar Corp; could you talk a little bit about your involvement with that?

Patrick Byrne: I have a second hat; I'm a journalist at DeepCapture.com. We've studied this crew for years, and I can tell you exactly what happened. In October 2006, Barry Minkow approached Sam Antar.

Now, according to a deposition Minkow gave in his case with Usana. He approached Sam Antar and said, "Sam, why don't we work together." Both of these guys are ex-felons, they did prison time, and they both ha present themselves to the world as, "I'm a reformed swindler," and, "it takes one to know one." That's their whole schtick !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, in October 2006, Minkow talked to Antar, according to the deposition. A few days later, a guy named Gary Weiss presented Sam Antar to the world -- reintroduced him to the world -- and said, "Here's a guy everybody should know." In April 2007, something funny happened. Gary Weiss introduces a woman with another blog, named Tracy Coenen. She starts blogging on Overstock and Usana. Well, three days later, Barry Minkow's Fraud Discovery Institute submits a smear job to the SEC saying Usana was a bunch of crooks. That was all false, and it turns out, as a federal judge in Florida has found, Barry Minkow didn’t really do any research. Just minimal cursory research, as the judge described it, before he's out there saying, "Oh, the company's a scam job," and such. Editors note: that research was done by Robert L. Fitzpatrick and Jon Taylor

There's a well known New York hedge fund manager named Whitney Tilson who Minkow has said under oath paid him $40,000 to do this stuff on Usana. So now we get to Lennar Home Builders, and pretty much the same thing. Sam Antar wired Barry Minkow, who's now about to plead guilty and get another five years -- Antar wired him $250,000. Now, originally, Barry Minkow sort of covered in his testimony for Antar and said, "Well, he just did it as a gift; he liked me or something."

Lennar deposed Sam Antar, and we have sources that tell us that under oath, Sam Antar said, "I had to pay Barry Minkow that $250,000 as a price of admission to this club," and he admitted that's how he could get in on this game. So this is how, there's basically a list of C-level bloggers – Gary Weiss, Sam Antar, Tracy Coenen – and getting fed material by Barry Minkow.

Going up on Deep Capture very shortly you’ll see an analysis of, when Barry Minkow's stuff comes out, you can look at trading records of companies like Usana and when they started seeing failures to deliver in their stock, and when they went on the Reg SHO list, which was this list of companies that were seeing a lot of, let's say, manipulation in their stock, excessive failures to deliver. In Usana's case, three days before Minkow's delivering this Fraud Discovery Institute report to the SEC accusing Usana of a bunch of smears against them -- three days before he delivers, the deliveries go wild and Usana goes on the Reg SHO list for the first time.

So what about Whitney Tilsona (big fund manager), then, with the $40,000 payment there? I think it's very interesting. I've asked Whitney Tilson for an explanation. Why would he be paying $40,000 to a swindler, felon, and now a second-time felon, like Barry Minkow? And he hasn't answered. Whitney's answer is going to be, "Well, I paid Barry Minkow to do research. Well, when Whitney Tilson, who is allegedly a legitimate New York hedge fund manager, goes out and raises money from his clients, does he say that he's making investment decisions based on the work of guys like Barry Minkow? I seriously doubt it. Nobody is paying these guys this kind of money to hear what their thoughts are on the economy or what's their analysis of these companies. They're paying these guys to come up with sort of scurrilous smears against companies and then the hedge fund doing the paying can step in front of it and short it like they did on Usana buy a bunch of puts, and do a bunch of naked short selling, which is what explains the appearance on the Reg SHO just three days before their guy, like Barry Minkow or Sam Antar, takes their report to the SEC, and they simultaneously get this little coterie of C-list bloggers -- like Gary Weiss, Tracy Coenen, Sam Antar – to repeat all the Usana smears on message boards and on their own blogs.......

Minkow had all the allegations in the USANA case decided in his favor. The judge ordered USANA to pay his cost of court to the tune of 142 grand. How in the hell does quoting a deposition from that case in 2006 vindicate that scam USANA??? Minkow settled out and removed his postings as he didn't want to fight a losing battle on the only remaining charge which was the stock manipulation charge. All of the alleged libel USANA blathered about turned out to be verifiable fact. The judge ruled on that.

Jon Taylor, Robert L. Fitzpatrick, and Tracy Cohen, were not involved in any way in any stock shorting or manipulation. They supplied excellent factual information, analysis on the data and learned opinions about these companies. It is high time this scumbag Rod Cook get sued for making totally baseless criminal allegations against these fine people. Rod Cook is a complete loon!!!

Re: Rod Cook Declares USANA Exonerated?????

Wserra kindly responded on Quatloos. Cook obviously can't keep his facts straight. There is a link in that post to the historic Len Clements / Mwave and wserra debate over USANA. That is a must read. Thanks again, wserra!